Spaceship Test
by Ember Nickel
Summary: To achieve greatness, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time. Or, Rogue One, the fandom exchange. [Chocolate Box 2018 treat for sevenofspade.]


To: FreedomSwapAdmin AT alderaan DOT gal  
From: lianahallik AT rimnet DOT gal

Dear Admin,

I'm sorry to bother you on short notice but real life has kind of hit me hard these last few days. Don't worry, I won't take out the gory details on you. :p Just wanted to know if it would be possible for me to get an extension on my assignment. I should be able to complete it.

Thanks,

Liana

* * *

Dear Liana,

Thanks for reaching out to us. We should be able to grant you an extension, but could you let us know what's your username on the Galactic Archives?

Hope things get better soon.

-Mod L (for the team)

* * *

Dear Mods,

Oh sure, sorry about that! I'm signed up as "Stardust."

-Liana/stardust

* * *

Dear Liana/Stardust,

No problem, I've found your signup. I've gone ahead and made a note to give you four more days (Standard Coruscanti Time). If you don't have it in by then, unfortunately, we're going to need to find a replacement pilot to make sure your recipient is guaranteed a gift.

Best of luck in fulfilling your assignment!

-Mod L

* * *

 **Deadline Passed**

The deadline has currently passed! If you have not submitted your gift, you are sadly defaulted and will need to contact the mod team if you want to participate next year. We are still on track to open the collection in seven days.

May the Force be with all of our replacement pilots who are still working on gifts!

-Mod M (for the team)

 **Comments (8)**

ok_dokey: what year system are we using? dantooinian? hoth? jedhan? asking for a friend  
*FSA_Admin: We haven't figured that out yet. Be sure and leave us feedback in the Swap Wrapup post if you have ideas! (Mod D)  
liana_hallik: How do you convert out of Coruscanti time?  
*truthandcandor: What is wrong with these n00bs who don't even know how to use time zone converters?! Not everything revolves around you and your backwater homeworlds! RTFM already.  
*astromex: Click here for a intergalactic time zone converter.  
**ReBeLyElL: Don't use .emp sites, they install spyware to track your location, and they don't account for hyperspace conversions.  
***liana_hallik: So how do you convert out of Coruscanti time?  
*FSA_Admin: If you have concerns about a deadline, the initial message you were sent with your assignment (new or RP) should have a link to the time zone converter that we're using. (Mod L)

* * *

cravend: Not too many auto-defaults, that's good.  
organism: Really? You'd think with all the stress people have been under this year that there'd be more.  
monster: I think they got them out of the way earlier once they knew real life would be hard.  
cravend: Too bad hammerandsaw couldn't make it, I always liked reading his tentacle porn.  
monster: You know the rules, no playing favorites in modchat.  
cravend: Okay, well, we still need to split the collection into thirds and check for obvious issues. Incomplete drafts, Palpatinefic…  
organism: What's Palpatine fic?  
monster: Obvious placeholders. Like, copying and pasting 1728 words of "Palpatine Palpatine Palpatine Palpatine."  
organism: ...Okay? What's a Palpatine?  
cravend: Sometimes I forget how young you are.  
monster: She's a great mod! Never mind, this is probably not a conversation we want to have on chat.

* * *

 **Treat a Replacement Pilot**

One of the things that makes FreedomSwap work every year is the tireless contribution of individuals who did not sign up but create a gift at the last minute when we're in need of a substitute. If you're in the mood to create extra gifts, please consider creating a gift for one of these people! This is a completely optional endeavor.

If you're a Replacement Pilot, please comment below with a few suggestions for gifts you might want to receive and any do-not-wants you'd prefer your creators follow.

 **Comments (3)**

whillsways: Requesting fic for Kefin Hul Duels!, Ghost Soup Infidel Blue, or Heroic Princesses RPF. Any ship/rating. I like humor and fight scenes.  
DNW: art gifts, sorry! (I use a screen reader.) Religion-bashing.  
huffandpuff: Requesting fic or art for Kessel Passion, Hyperchase, or Compaction Action. I like scenery porn and (fic only) breathplay. Please no slash or NSFW art.  
greedisgood: fandoms: dunebros, the mutiny of the bounty hunters, bith music rpf  
xeno porn plz  
no character death

* * *

Dear Admin,

I'm really sorry but I don't think I'll have net access for the next couple days. Things are just getting kind of crazy. Would it be possible for me to send you my file so you can upload it and give it to my recipient yourself?

Sorry again.

-Stardust/liana

* * *

Dear Liana,

I'm very sorry to hear that life is so stressful. I'm not sure that I understand your question? If you're able to access the net with a stable enough connection to send us a message in the next two days, you should be able to upload your gift. If not, then I'm afraid messaging us won't really help you.

Do you need any help figuring out how to use the Galactic Archives? There's a guide here, and lots of moderators and experienced users are online on Harmony Chat to help you figure out the process if you have any questions! Remember, it doesn't need to be perfect—just a thoughtful effort.

Good luck finishing it up.

Yours in hope,

Mod L

* * *

organism: So after the second deadline do we do another round of checking for, uh, "Palpatine fic"?  
monster: That's a good idea. Most of the pilots at this stage are pretty good about getting back to us.  
cravend: You never know. There's always someone like bobthebobster who thinks he can take on more assignments than he can handle.  
organism: Lol, what happened that year?  
monster: Well, we changed the rules to prevent someone signing up with an army of their clones, for one thing, and that's cut down on the number of late defaults.  
organism: Good idea. Sounds like I miss all the fun modding shenanigans.  
cravend: Consider yourself lucky. A quiet modding process is a good year. And means more time to work on my fics too.  
monster: If you churn out another 10k Gary Stu OC, I'm never beta-reading for you again.  
cravend: Not my fault the matching algorithm got me another no-letter recip! Probably a Hutt.  
organism: Okay, so? Proofreads?  
monster: If you want to get a jump start, knock yourself out. I told tenebris_lux I'd beta his treat but this is an extremely boring high school AU, so I could be a while.

* * *

 **Alliance Anonymous**

Plot bunnies been tortured and exiled? Writer's block feeling worse than a cell block in Imperial custody? Your gift was a lump of bantha dung? We're here to commiserate!

Please don't share details of your assignment or anything that could personally out you. Loose lips explode ships!

 **Comments (2187)**

...

 **Scanning the collection**

Sensors displaying anything good?

Can't wait to read the canon-divergence fics for Hyperchase!  
*And the spaceship art looks really good too!  
There's a lot of Clone Wars RPF this year. Including longfic!  
*Did someone draw NSFW clone/Jedi art? Going to be wanting my incognito mode for that!  
*Who requests Clone Wars RPF with "AU—NOT IN SPACE" tag? Boring.  
**Check the requests signup, noob.  
***It was a rhetorical question.  
*Isn't this kind of stuff kinda...seditious? Like I'm all for a good alternate history but come on, it's dangerous to speculate that it could have gone any other way.  
**What part of "Alliance Anonymous" do you not understand?  
***Or "Freedom Swap" for that matter? lrn2proxy if you're scared.  
Good news, I finally have a gift! :D Bad news, none of the fandoms I requested have gifts listed in them on the fandoms page. :( Is something wrong?  
*Are any of them new fandoms? There used to be some issues where they wouldn't display.  
**Oh come on, that's been dealt with. The Galactic Archives have their issues, but even the Empire isn't THAT evil.  
**No, they're all showing up on the normal display.  
***Huh. Well, guess that's admin's problem to deal with.

* * *

organism: Hey, sorry to interrupt, but can you help me with something?  
monster: Oh, yes please! If I see one more paragraph where nothing happens my eyes are going to glaze over.  
organism: Check out this gift for binary_sunset. No tags, not even a fandom. It was uploaded by stardust, who's been asking for extensions and sending us e-mails about her spotty connectivity.  
cravend: Word count is super high...Did the recip opt-in for art or interactive fic?  
organism: Not that I can tell. But look at the gibberish in the file; this makes even less sense than "Palpatine Palpatine Palpatine Palpatine."  
monster: Maybe the formatting got broken in the file upload process?  
cravend: That's a generous assumption, some of these people just try to paste in whatever and hope we don't notice.  
organism: Guess that's going to be a late default and we'll put it out on the late replacement pilot list. Too bad, she sounded really desperate to get that through.  
cravend: Was it her first year? Some people sign up and have issues with deadlines they can't plan for.  
monster: Funny you should ask. It looks like the same account has signed up under various pseuds—kestrel_dawn, a few others—but then orphaned her previous stuff and started over.  
organism: WAIT, is that the same kestrel_dawn who wrote "Lah'mu Sunrise"? I have all her fics bookmarked! I had no idea she was still in fandom!  
cravend: You would probably know better than we do.  
organism: Aaah, it is, I had no idea. I hope she's okay.  
monster: Well, I'll go put out the call for replacement pilots. Hopefully the fandoms aren't too rare.

* * *

Dear stardust,

Unfortunately, your upload "PLACEHOLDER" has failed to meet legibility requirements and you have been automatically defaulted for this year. Please complete a Moonshot Bonus gift if you would like to participate next year. On behalf of the team, we hope all is well with you, and please comment on your gift if you are able.

All the best,

-Mod L

* * *

MODS-

do not delete my fic!

please run through alliance decryption standard 3.8ks

sorry

-lh

* * *

organism: Hi, is there a more secure way I can send you all a long message?  
cravend: Secure like how?  
organism: Like where no one else can read it. I'm not concerned about participant privacy so much as...other concerns.  
monster: RL identifying information?  
organism: No, more like Alliance-sensitive data.  
cravend: Why are you bringing this up here?  
organism: Because it's FreedomSwap relevant.  
monster: Consider me intrigued.  
organism: You all read stardust's latest update about not deleting her fic, right?  
cravend: Kiddo, you're kind of new to this, so let me just tell you that never in the history of FreedomSwap has a pleading message yelling "MODS, do not delete my fic" with multiple exclamation points led anywhere good.  
organism: Well, you actually should hear her out. Go ahead and run the decryption algorithm on the gibberish, it's worth your time. I mean, it's still not a legitimate gift, but it's something.  
monster: What is it?  
organism: A technical readout of the Imperial battle station. Complete with annotations about its weaknesses and how we can destroy it.  
cravend: That's impossible.  
monster: I wouldn't say that, just very technically demanding.  
organism: Double-check my work to see it for yourselves, but I think you'll see I'm right. I can't imagine what it would take to get that to us, smuggled out under the Empire's nose. I hope she's okay.

* * *

Dear Liana,

Thank you, thank you, thank you again for your "upload." The mods have received it and we're unspeakably grateful for your efforts.

If it isn't too weird to ask, were you kestrel_dawn in _Harmony of the Spheres_ fandom? If so, I love your fic and am really glad to see you're still around. If not, well, I'm still really glad to see your "contributions" to Alliance efforts. ;)

If you're ever in the Alderaan neighborhood, I'd love to meet up for a write-in/art-in/whatever! If you need help with transportation (I know some of the public transit is kind of terrible around that area) let me know, I might be able to pick you up if I'm free. Obviously, don't push it if that would be weird.

Thanks again.

-Mod L (organism)

* * *

Hey, organism,

You're welcome. :D Sorry about the default, I hope you can understand that RL was kind of kicking my butt at that point.

Yeah, that was me! I'm glad someone remembers those days fondly, I kind of cringe at the stuff I used to do back then but I figure I'd leave it up just in case people want to look back on the memories. Good times.

If you're free next weekend (Coruscanti time? lol, I still need help with this part) I wouldn't mind stopping by. If it's not too much trouble, could you pick up some of my friends too? I'm sure most of them are going to be in excited reveals mode and too busy commenting on gifts to pay much attention but it'd be nice to get somewhere a little quiet for that kind of thing.

Thanks,

stardust/Liana (if we meet up in person I guess we can exchange real names?)

* * *

Dear Liana,

Sounds great! Let me know your nearest port and I'll figure out when to swing by.

-organism/L

* * *

monster: Well, I guess things could be worse. Nobody's melting down on Alliance Anonymous.  
cravend: Why do you even read those sites?  
monster: It's always useful to stay a step ahead of the intelligence situation.  
cravend: Yes, which is why we should actually be infiltrating the Empire and not just sitting around trying to look faultless.  
organism: Hiiiiiiiiiiiii!  
monster: Enjoying your treats? ;)  
organism: Lol those are good too. But I met kestrel_dawn!  
cravend: Are we dealing out punishments in person to defaulters now?  
organism: To thank her for delivering those plans, one way or another. :p And to tell her that her fic is really hot...and, uh, it turns out that she was really hot…  
cravend: Oh dear.  
monster: I'm glad you're able to spend time offline and away from your mod duties.  
organism: Anyway it turns out that she needs a place to stay for a while so hopefully she's going to crash on Alderaan for the near future 3 and maybe some of her friends too. They're great, you'll like them.  
cravend: Do you say that before or after knowing which ridiculous gifts they gave?  
organism: Both, lol.  
cravend: Did binary_sunset ever get a replacement pilot sorted out?  
monster: Yeah, x0xcyborgx0x made him some digital art of a couple cartoon robots. Pretty basic, but I think he seemed to like it.  
cravend: x0xcyborgx0x did something nice? Really? I guess the Force was with all of us this year.  
organism: What's that person's deal?  
monster: Kind of infamous ship war troll from back in the day. Would get into terrible flamewars about Tie Fighters versus X-Wing hypotheticals.  
organism: Ugh. Well, let me know if any issues come up, otherwise I'm off to leave more kudos. And message Liana back. :)

* * *

Comment on _Ribbons of Light_

First of all _someone else who has seen Cluster Prism_! and second of all _someone else who has_...like...literally all my same headcanons for it! Iri reflecting the weapons of the Spark Cloud against them! The Werkin moon being tidally synchronized to the planet! Brua and Kneth having to work together to raise children while not falling sway to the extremist factions, so astounding. And Climp's rejection of the darkness, even at tremendous cost! Ugh, I love everything about this.

Also under the circumstances I'm preeeetty sure the only way someone would know all the speculation my dad and I came up with when I was a kid is if he entered FreedomSwap, so, uh, at the risk of deanoning you, hi! Glad to see you still have time for fun stuff, but seriously, you need a better job real soon. :) Please comment back and let me know where I can message you!

This is probably not the right place to be having this conversation, but as long as we're on the subject, you're going to like my new date, she's real cool.

-stardust

*You are right, it is very annoying when none of your colleagues have the same tastes in media as you. There are some unexpected benefits though.  
*I'm at galeforce AT eadu DOT gal (hope the mods don't mind).  
*-Anonymous Creator  
**I think I can get them to look the other way. ;)  
**-stardust


End file.
